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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The landscape of lenders willing to work with small business owners has changed dramatically
Posted by shuseel at 12:23 AMThe landscape of lenders willing to work with small business owners has changed dramatically in the last year, but one bank -- Wells Fargo -- has emerged stronger than ever.
While other financiers that were historically major players took a knee, Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) increased its lending, emerging as the new number-one lender through the Small Business Administration's loan programs.
CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Banco Popular of North America and others that once held top spots have cut their SBA lending by more than 70% this year. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo upped its loan volume 4%, from $583.4 million in 2008 to $605 million this year.
Some of that gain may be fueled by Wells Fargo's late-2008 acquisition of Wachovia, another bank that traditionally made many SBA-backed small business loans. The acquisition closed three months into the 2009 fiscal year (which the SBA began Oct. 1), leading Wachovia and Wells Fargo to report their loans separately through part of the year.
Taken together, the two banks lent $742.3 million this year -- down 24% from what they collectively lent as independent banks last year, but still far more than any other bank put into the small business market. The next runner-up, U.S. Bank (USB, Fortune 500), made $249.5 million in loans through the SBA's flagship lending program.
Given the retraction of a number of key lenders, Wells Fargo's leap to the top is not a major surprise. "I don't see anything shocking with Wells Fargo being number one," says Bob Coleman, editor of the Coleman Report, which monitors small business lending trends.
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